← Fame through time1853
1853
Whose working lives fell in 1853. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in 1853, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Karl Marx17 decades - 2
Alexander II of Russia17 decades - 3
Frederick Douglass18 decades - 4
Ignaz Semmelweis6 decades - 5
Ivan Turgenev6 decades - 6
Mary Todd Lincoln10 decades - 7
Christian IX of Denmark16 decades - 8
James Prescott Joule3 decades - 9
Charles Gounod17 decades - 10
Maria II of Portugal0 decades - 11
Francesco Crispi18 decades - 12
Jacob Burckhardt17 decades
- 13
P. G. T. Beauregardnot measured- - 14
Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gothanot measured- - 15
Tewodros II0 decades - 16
Marius Petipa7 decades - 17
Adolf Anderssen0 decades - 18
Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle17 decades - 19
Lewis H. Morgan15 decades - 20
Lucy Stone17 decades - 21
Maria Mitchell17 decades - 22
Sophie of Württembergnot measured- - 23
Angelica Singleton Van Buren0 decades - 24
Thomas Mayne Reid0 decades - 25
Richard Jordan Gatling0 decades
How to read these rankings
- People sit in their own time. Everyone is placed in the century their working life belongs to, and never in one that came after their death.
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record, read across every language rather than one. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus. Those decades are closed, so each curve is measured once and kept.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, or a name belongs to more than one notable person, we would rather show nothing than guess.